Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

I am not the biggest fan of John Gormley but that does not mean I will not say he has done well. In his carbon budget one of the policies is to
develop a national energy efficiency standard for lightbulbs, which will see an end to the use of incandescent bulbs by January 2009.
I have always [...]

Who said this.
waste incineration is used extensively within the OECD countries and is regulated by a number of EU Directives. Irish environmental legislation, in particular the Environmental Protection Agency Act. 1992, provides for the licensing of waste incineration activities on the basis of best practicable standards, including relevant EU requirements. Licences for both industrial and [...]

Bord Pleanala has laid a bed of nails for Minister Gormley. They have granted permission for the Poolbeg incinerator to go ahead with a capacity of 600,000. The inspector report recommended that the incinerator should only have a capacity of 500,00 tonnes at the most but DCC want the 600,000 to make up the shortfall [...]

Labour the other day released a press release about the new car add’s showing the CO2 emissions from cars such as adds with g/km of CO2 in them. Tommy Broughan says
The transport sector contributes very significantly to our total greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal for making much more information available to consumers on the environmental [...]

Announced this afternoon — the rule requiring that a driver on a 2nd provisional licence have a driver with a full licence in the car is postponed until end of June 2008. 8 months to clear the test backlog (209,000 currently on their 1st provisional, by the way). Statement from the Department of [...]

It seems a happy coincidence that last week John Gormley announced national capacity for waste incineration in 2016 would be 400,000 tonnes and only two plants and today An Bord Pleanala give Indaver permission to increase the capacity of the Meath project and bring the capacity of their two plants in Cork and Meath up [...]

The new inside out is available for download, sorry for missing last week. This week the voice you hear is my own (go easy please). We are looking at Climate Change so hop over an have a look.

John Gormley has come out with his new building regulations and fine regulations they are too. However since a lot of our housing stock has been built of late with Fianna Fail’s forward planning it is a bit late. One interesting point is the regulation for more energy efficient lighting. With CFL lamps made [...]

Indymedia is all alight with people cheering on the efforts of protesters who stormed the refinery (one commenter has likened it to 1916 which of course like this was a peaceful protest). With news that a person has be arrested for assaulting a Garda. I have talked in favour of the governments policy before thus [...]

There is a bit of a clash between the Greens and Fianna Fail at the moment about Hare coursing. I have never gone hare coursing but I have participated in the catching of hares when I was a kid. Me and a cousin jumped in the back of a van. Were brought to a bog [...]

The greens are continuing being the busiest people in the cabinet. This time it Eamon Ryan’s turn to do something. A new tax of 15% on profitable Gas and Oil finds in Ireland. Not a bad move. Certainly not exorbitant and in the era of high oil prices probably not enough to scare the oil [...]

Morgan pledges support for Unions in battle against privatisation of ESB. Isn’t he great?
Speaking today as ESB Unions met to discuss possible strike action over plans to hand over the National Transmission Grid to private company Eirgrid,
Oh dear a private company how terrible. Thing is look up Eirgrid and you find out.
EirGrid is owned by [...]

John Gumley is not just after the corporations it seems he is also going to up the Litter fines on people, from €125 Euro to €150 Euro or a rise of 20%. The €125 fine was introduced in 2002. Since then inflation has increased a lot. Around 5% this year even. Lets take FinFacts Guinness [...]

Just when I was warming to John Gumley he went back to his old ways. Ahh well. From RTE;
Gormley targets chewing gum manufacturers. Now this is more of the usual lets scapegoat the corporations moronic shite. Gum on our streets is terrible and anyone who has stood on it will atest. But who ’s [...]

According to tomorrow’s Sunday Business Post, Environment Minister John Gormley will soon present a memo to Cabinet with a view to reforming the election process for Senators.
The article doesn’t give too much detail on his plans, but the crux of his proposal is the suggestion to make the majority of Senators directly elected by the [...]

John Gormley pledged today that he will review his department’s stance in relation to “archaeological practice and policy”. He also released the documents dealing with the site at Lismullen, which is on the route of the controversial M3 motorway. Such openness and transparency is to be welcomed; but the whole affair raises questions over how [...]